I told my fans on Facebook that when I reach 4k likes I’ll post the first chapter of Let it be Me! Well I HIT IT! Ack! Mostly big thanks to Gail Marino-Mchugh for a giveaway she included me in and sent all her amazing fans my way! SO HI NEW FANS! hehe.
Anyways, this book is very personal to me. Very close to my heart and soul. It is very gripping, intense, and you’ll need a box of tissue. I have completely went out of my box and creating something that I stand behind 1000% and I proud to give this book to the world, since it is for my mom, who I lost this past May.
This is the Prologue of Let it be Me and I hope and pray that it grips you and makes you want more. Please, leave comments, tell me what you think and most of all, enjoy it. Learn from it and also know you have the strength to do anything you put your mind too.
Thank you for your time and enjoy the Prologue of Let it be Me, a novel by ME! that is due out next week, October 2, 2013.
SEE THAT WOMAN there?
The one with beautiful long wavy blonde hair cascading down her shoulders, her arms up protecting her eyes and face?
That’s me. Violet Moore.
I’ve always loved my big blue eyes, hence the reason I’m balled up trying to protect them, along with the nose I received from my mother and the defiant chin I got from my father. Before, Rob used to say my eyes could light up a room. Now he says they annoy him. Everything I do annoys him. I think even when I breathe, he’s annoyed, which is why he hits me.
Like now, his booted foot connects with my gut with a force strong enough to obliterate any breath I thought I had. A strangled cry pitches from deep within my diaphragm, scorching my throat and he ignores it. He always ignores me. In some ways, I think it makes it worse. His kicks get harder, more frantic and violent when I scream or cry, but I can’t help it. His broad, 5’11 frame towers over my own willowy 5’6 build. He is stronger, much stronger, and Lord knows I’m scared of him. Like now, he lets loose a string of obscenities about how I’m the world’s biggest piece of shit when, not two years ago, I was his world. Before, I used to be the most amazing woman and he was the luckiest man on earth to have me. He promised me the world, and all I’ve received in the last two years is pain and heartache.
Why the hell do I stay? Why do I take this and why do I allow this to happen?
I’ve asked myself those same questions for the last seven hundred and thirty days, but for some reason I still stay. Even through the horrible honeymoon where I learned that the way I eat has driven him half past mad a dozen times. I spent most of our trip with sunglasses covering my bruised eyes, trying to hide from the stares of bystanders. Or when he took me away from my family in Colorado to Tennessee, so they would stop asking questions about my injuries. Or when he kicked me so hard, I lost my child.
Is it love? Hell, I sure don’t think so because his voice makes my skin crawl. Even with his dark hair and even darker eyes, his olive skin, and the thick scruff that used to turn me on, I can’t stand the sight of him. I hate him. Am I scared to leave? Yes. Do I feel like I’ll never find someone to love me? Definitely. I’m scared shitless and it doesn’t help that Rob tells me daily that no one will ever love me. Have I lost all faith? Am I at the bottom of all bottoms? Fuck yes.I know it’s horrible, and I know I shouldn’t believe him, that I should love myself before anything. There used to be a day when I did, but Rob sucked it out of me.
With my hands cupped over my face, I tense and wait for the blow, the one that tells me it’s going to be a long night and he’s had too much to drink. I don’t want to lie down and give him an even bigger advantage than he already has, but as his booted foot cracks into my sternum, I know it’s all over. My ragdoll body flies back a few feet and my hip slams into the cold linoleum of our kitchen floor. I used to love the swirling pattern of tiny, cerulean flowers, but now I avoid this room for fear of gagging.
I let my body sag down until my temple hits the floor, the stars in my eyes and heave in my chest threatening bile or worst: blood. His foot connects again and a strangled cry pitches forth, straight from my diaphragm, ripping apart my throat. I can’t help but scream, even though I know it’ll only get worse.
It always does.
His kicks become harder and more frantic and I long for the warm detachment of unconsciousness, willing it to take me away.
It’s amazing that Rob, the tall, dark and handsome stranger I fell in love with years ago, the one who carried me down the beach so I could snap my own “Footprints” photo, who stayed up with me late at night to tell stories and draw endless circles in the soft flesh of my back with his fingertips, could change so completely that he’s nothing more than a distorted image, a blurry memory of what could have been.
I should have run the first time I heard “I’m sorry” while covering my black-and-blue eyes with dark sunglasses. I should have known better when he packed up our home and took me away from my family in Colorado to move to Tennessee, a place I’d never been, after my mom questioned the fingerprints on my forearms. But I didn’t. I went with him and now look where I am.
He lets loose a string of obscenities about how I’m worthless as his foot cracks into my sternum again, and any breath I thought I had whooshes away and leaves me empty inside. I wrap my shaking fingers around my long blond hair, holding it close to me so that he has nothing to grab on to.
Letting out a maniacal laugh that makes my blood curdle and congeal instantly in my veins, he takes a few steps back to look at the mess he’s made. The small pool of blood from my nose, my supine, willowy form with slim arms that cradle the stomach in which a baby had been growing before he kicked that away mere months ago. His eyes are distant, cold, and I know he’s not looking at me anymore.
I’m aware that I could be classified as a weak person, but don’t give up on me yet, because, look, do you see that? Do you see the way I’m getting up? Look, I’m grabbing his grandmother’s ugly vase and look at my face. See the way my chin is going up, the way my tears have stopped? How my shoulders are squaring up? See how my grip on the vase has tightened? And look, do you see the shocked look on his face?
Because I do.
For once I feel the strength that has been hiding inside me for the last two years, the kind that converges under my skin until it manifests itself into something I can use. I’m going to beat the shit out of Rob for once.
I’m going to fight back. I have to or he may very well kill me.
Why am I doing this now you may ask?
Why hadn’t I done this way before I married him, lost a child, and became so weak that I hate myself?
Well. Get a blanket and maybe a glass of wine, you’re going to need it, because my story isn’t a happy one, well no, I take that back. It can be happy, I can be happy; I just have to get there. I have to fight for it. So sit back and let me explain how the fight was woken inside me.
It all starts with Tucker McCloud…
Oh my. Are you certain we have to wait until Wednesday. 🙁 I so want to continue reading this now! I can not wait.
WOW… I can’t wait to read on….
I wish I hadn’t read this….now I want to read the rest of the book and I’m not a very patient person.
Toni-
This is everything I expected it to be and then some! WOW! Looking forward to next Wednesday. Thanks again for not disappointing, you’re a fantastic author! My only complaint…..I read your books faster than you write them 😉 lol
Wow Toni….. It takes a lot to make my stomach clench, but this is one powerful beginning. I can’t wait up finish it.
:0)
HOLY HANNA.. now please dont make us wait to long ….. hit publish ASAP…
October 2nd, cannot get here fast enough!!!! This is going to be amazing!!! (of course 🙂 )
Waiting……… This is going to be AMAZING, just like everything else you write 🙂
WOW…….This is so AMAZING ……2th Oct hurry up…….. 🙂
I’m definitely going to download this book on Wednesday..I hope she hits him with more than grandma’s vase
This book sounds fantastic!! Can’t wait for it to come out. It is on my TBR list… 😀